Quantitative ecology

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research interests

My fields of interests remain very open, and consist in understanding how biodiversity is shaped by abiotic and biotic processes.

Trough this broad issue, my interests generally investigate wheteher and environmental changes influence the ecological processes driving the spatial and temporal dynamics of community and species distributions.

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Biodiversity responses to global changes

Global change is a unique opportunity to study a broad scale and ongoing changes in environment. It gives the chance to test hypothesis in theoretical ecology, and apply direct results in biodiversity conservation. While the impact of such changes on biological diversity is now well documented, disentangling the evolutionary, ecological and physiological processes involved remains challenging. My aim, as a researcher in ecology, is to understand in what extent biotic interactions, niche theory and evolutionary history are able to explain the diversity patterns and their dynamics.

My PhD specially focused on the mechanisms of response and adaptation induced by global change on birds :

How climate-induced changes in community composition affect ecological and functional characteristics of these communities ?

How and why community dynamics are affected by the joints effects of global warming and land use change ?

Why some species are most likely to be affected or adapt to each of these large-scale environmental changes ?

Conservation

My first love with ecology was the conservation of biodiversity and the protection of natural environments. Before heading to the scientific research, I achieved a master’s degree in management of biodiversity and sustainable development. I’am interested in how scientific, social, political and natural interactions can be arranged to protect biodiversity at best.

Within my research work, I try to strengthen the connections between theoretical ecology/evolution, applied ecology and conservation of biodiversity. I think that biodiversity indicators are more relevant when they are deeply based on theoretical predictions expected from ecological theory. My work relies on using such indicators with large scale datasets, what provides a powerful framework to test theoretical assumptions on natural systems. Therefore, carrying out such studies based on large data sets and grounded in ecological theory represents a win-win situation for basic and applied research.

Bats ecology

Understand the way in which the effects of bats morphology and acoustic, commingled with the food and roosts availability of habitats draw the local distribution and activity of bats is very exciting. While such issues were particularly studied in birds, they remain obscure when it comes to bats, especially for forest-dwelling ones. Moreover, the contribution of bats to ecosystem services has been widely overlooked until recently. As they could provide essential top-down control of herbivorous insects, it seems important to highlight functional and numerical responses of bats to high density of natural pests. What should logically enhance their inclusion in conservation and agricultural management.

Data & study system

To now, I’ve been mainly working on birds, a biological models that i always enjoyed because it is a strong interest on field ornithology that leads me Ecological Science. I have also been working in bats, but aims to work with other taxa such as plants in order to investigate ecosystem-scale issues.

Large datasets provided by citizen-science monitoring program suc as the French Breeding Bird Survey are first choice tools to adress the issues previously presented. I use quantitative and ecoinformatics approach, biostatistics and experimental-field design studies to perform my research.

Data Visualization

“Information is Beautiful”

I really enjoy this slogan, and i think that visualizing information – scientific results, facts, data, ideas, subjects, issues, statistics, questions – may be totally enjoyable and beautiful while remaining clear and informative.

So, I’m just interested in the different basic tools that can enhance visual communication, such as use of ggplot2 (R package) and graphic design software ( Inkscape, Photoshop). I will soon share some work in this regard, but you can have a look in this inspirational site.